#RebeccaSolnit

"The United States is destroying itself.

The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment.

The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled. All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out in news stories about this specific incident or department, the reports never adequately describe an administration sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and also trashing the global economy, international alliances and relationships, and the national and global environment in ways that will have downstream consequences for decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate, centuries.

(. . .)

But trying to understand motives is something of a hobby when the focus needs to be on consequences. We do not need to understand these criminals in order to try to contain and ultimately remove them. They will not last for ever, and we need to think about what happens when they’re gone – to talk about the kind of reconstruction the US will face for the first time since the civil war, the reconstruction a ravaged and corrupted country has to go through to return to functionality. But not to return to the way things were."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/united-states-trump-destruction

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/united-states-trump-destruction

“Trump at some level knows he’s failing politically, cognitively and physically and wants to take it all down with him, the way that ancient rulers were buried with their slaughtered horses and servants” #rebeccasolnit

USAnian liberals are v funny.

#RebeccaSolnit rightly observes that the #USA is being dismantled from within, but somehow thinks that's a Bad Thing™. :D

Yes, #Solnit really wants readers to believe in the virtue myths of an empire founded on violent conquest and racism, built on genocide and the Big Lie of "liberty". 🤣😅

Solnit is course right that #Trump is a depraved, crooked monster. But her notion of another, virtuous America, is a Big Lie.

Why does #TheGuardian publish this crap?

The United States is destroying itself | Rebecca Solnit | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/united-states-trump-destruction

#RebeccaSolnit
#USPol

I listened to #RebeccaSolnit speak with Mitch Jeserich about her new book, The Beginning Comes After the End at #CliosBooks last night in #Oakland .

She is one of those thinkers and writers who help me make sense of the world right now, like #HeatherCoxRichardson. I've started reading her book, which is significant for me. Since 2020, and especially 2024 I've gone from being a fairly avid reader to a phone starer. I now realize that is a form of defeat.

She uses #history and the long view of various movements of #ClimateActivism and #HumanRights to show that, while things seem dark, we continue to make the world better, and that we cannot give up and use the language of defeat. She referenced another person helping me right now, #EricaChenoweth.

She's on BlueSky, bridged to here, and Facebook, but sadly, not here. Check out this book. And to the person here on sfba.social who told me about this event, thank you.

Also, Clio's Books is fabulous. Cocktails, #books and intimate spaces!

@bookstodon
#resist

Gardening and the Creative Spirit: 200 Years of Great Writers and Artists on the Rewards of Soil and Seed

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/03/29/writers-artists-gardens/

“I often feel like a tortoise at a mayfly party,” she says, via video call from San Francisco. “People do not remember the past … [they] often seem to live in a perpetual present. And some find that reassuring, that nothing is ever going to change. Some find it despair-inducing, because nothing is ever going to change.”

~ #RebeccaSolnit

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/mar/25/rebecca-solnit-slow-revolution-far-right-cannot-tolerate